Acquitted Polish alleged mafia boss demands justice

Ryszard B., the alleged boss of the infamous Polish Pruszkow mafia, was aquitted of killing a national police chief, but he says that he has not been exonerated enough, the Polish media reported in April 2014.

“The scale of irregularities committed by the law enforcement during the investigation [into the murder of Marek Papala – Ed. Note] was not reflected in the justification,” Ryszard B.’s lawyer said, as quoted by the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita.

Ryszard B., the alleged boss of the Pruszkow mafia – an organized crime group operating in the 1990s throughout Poland, is now serving a 25-year sentence for the murder of another Polish alleged mafia boss, Andrzej Kolikowski “Pershing”. Pershing was murdered in 1998, and Ryszard B. was sentenced for his murder in 2007.

While serving the 25-year murder sentence, Ryszard B. was exonerated from the charges of murder of Marek Papala, the chief of the Polish national police, in July 2013. In the written justification of the ruling, the court stated that the evidence presented by the prosecution were nothing more than “ fragile, scattered  links,” insufficient to prove that the indicted individual did play a role in the murder of Marek Papala.

Ryszard B. and his lawyers appealed the written justification of the favorable verdict, pointing out 21 different passages of the justification that the defense thinks should be corrected. The main point of criticisms raised by the defense was that the justification focused on stating that there was not enough evidence to charge Ryszard B instead of clearly stating that evidence substantiated his innocence.

Ryszard B. spent 11 years imprisoned as a result of the murder charges relating to Chief Marek Papala. Should the exonerating sentence be validated by a court of second instance, Ryszard B. will have the right to demand indemnification for ungrounded incarceration.

Marek Papala was shot dead in 1998 in front of his house in Warsaw when he was stepping out of his car. The Polish press has on many occasions criticized the lack of both effectiveness and professionalism of the Polish prosecution in what relates to the case of Marek Papala, as no one has so far been convicted for his murder.